


Sleepless Nights

by Leatin Trash (boudicas)



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: F/F, Island Flashbacks, Late night talks, Pining, Underage Drinking, dot helps fatin get her shit together, fatin has many one night stands, fatin likes pushing people away to protect herself, fatin pov, leah's just trying to feel something again, post island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29359752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boudicas/pseuds/Leatin%20Trash
Summary: What Leah whispers next causes Fatin’s heart to throb.“Please stay.”Fatin allows Leah to pull her down next to her as she grumbles, “You’re lucky my ass is freezing off right now.”Leah cracks a faint smile, leaning her head on Fatin’s shoulder. And she lets her.OrFatin and Leah were closer than they'd like to admit on the island, but Leah begins to have doubts. Late nights on the island were often for the two, talking until their minds shut off and holding each other 'til the sun broke the horizon. Although, habits die hard because even off the island, Fatin finds herself awake in the middle of the night comforting Leah.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke
Comments: 5
Kudos: 157





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Some people are telling me Marty dies?? And I refuse even though the other girls aren’t really featured in this fic. So, just know, Marty is alive and well in this universe because fuck anyone who says otherwise. :)

Fatin has never been happier to see Leah in her life.

Alarms are blaring all throughout the facility while lights are flashing scarlet in the hallways. Stormy blue eyes reflect into her own, and for that one suspended moment composed of infinite femtoseconds, Fatin remembers what it feels like to be seen. 

“I’m never leaving California again,” Fatin mutters. 

She traces the curve of chapped lips, licking her own as a memory resurfaces. One that she’s tried to lock away. One of late nights and tormented minds. 

Leah attempts a smile, but it doesn’t quite radiate any warmth. 

“We still need to get the others.” She hurriedly motions down the hall. “Shelby and I have a plan, but it’s really all or nothing.”

Fatin is quick to collect what little she has, which includes the snacks she’s hoarded from the vending machine over the past week and the few hygiene products she was provided with. Leah already left by the time her arms are full, and when she peeks out into endless corridors, Rachel and Toni are hurrying over.

They both look exhausted and their skin is impossibly dry and sunburnt; but they glow with affection when they see her. 

“Give me a hand with this, will you?” Fatin asks, lifting her supplies like some trophy.

Rachel pauses, processing the request, and Fatin thinks she’s gone a little too far, maybe hand jokes are too soon. But the grin that splits across Rachel’s face is enough to ease her worry.

“That was a low blow,” Rachel shakes her head, slinging her good arm around Fatin’s shoulders. 

“Blowing is one of my finer qualities,” Fatin quips, wiggling her eyebrows.

Toni snorts, grabbing a bag of Takis from the top of Fatin’s pile. “God, I’ve missed you,” she says around a mouthful of chips.

Fatin softens, leaning her head against Toni’s shoulder. “I’ve missed you girls, too.”

“Oh, I was talking to the Takis,” Toni deadpans, and Fatin’s mouth drops open, blatantly offended. “But you too, I guess.”

Fatin elbows her side. “Ha ha ha.” 

“Wait, so what’s Leah’s plan?” Rachel asks, following the brunette further down the halls. “I knew something was up when glasses kept on pushing me about my ED. It’s like no one cared about returning us home. They were _invasive_ , and… and-”

How the hell does Leah even know where she’s going?

“Fucking nosy,” Toni finishes for her. “They wanted to know about more than just the island, wanted to know about who I was before all of this shit.”

When Dot bursts forth from her room, she immediately engulfs the girls in a group hug. “When I said I needed a break from you bitches, I didn’t mean a week of solitary confinement.”

They all laugh, euphoric from their reunion, riding on a high because shit, they’ve missed each other. Fatin would die for these girls. More importantly, she’d live for them, too.

“So this plan?” Rachel repeats once more. 

Shelby emerges from one of the rooms, crutching over. Fatin has to do a double-take, having forgotten the recent development to her appearance. The very _bald_ development. 

Toni surges forward, wrapping her arms around Shelby and kissing her temple. “You’re getting Taki dust all over me,” Shelby half-heartedly complains in that familiar southern accent that Toni has grown to adore.

“We’re off the coast of Peru,” Leah states, like that will help with anything else. 

Shelby offers more of an explanation, talking as they continue to rush around. “There are five operatives on duty at all times. They all have sedation needles on hand, but all we need to do is debilitate them before they can knock us out.” 

“Woah, I never signed up for a prison riot,” Fatin intervenes, tensing up at the thought. She faces her problems head-on, but violence isn’t typically her style. What if someone decked her in the face? No one wants a pretty girl with a botched nose. 

“And aren’t we missing two people?” Dot reminds them, concerned. She does a headcount, confirming that they are missing some of their friends.

Toni cuts in as they walk down a narrow corridor with pipes lining the walls. “Marty is already back in Minnesota. They said she woke up a few days ago and is in recovery.”

“Nora is back in New York, too,” Rachel shares, an arm still securely wrapped around Fatin. “They haven’t received any news on her, still say she’s in a coma.” 

Fatin can’t help the sympathetic look she sends her way. Rachel only nods in acknowledgment.

“So what? We overpower the employees, and prison break?” Dot shakes her head at the ridiculous notion. 

“Where are these employees?” Rachel points out, checking behind them. “With all of these alarms, you’d think an army would be after us.”

Leah turns around, accidentally catching Fatin’s gaze, and she looks away, still unable to face Fatin after the last few nights they shared on the island. 

“They’re on the other side of the facility,” Leah fills in, picking at the corner of her eyebrow. “They think it’s another code purple, but they have cameras everywhere, so they’ll catch on eventually. Wait,” she stops them in front of a scarlet red door, opening it, “you need to see this.”

Fatin wants to cut in, wants to ask why they’re stopping to look at something when they should be fleeing north and away from Peru, back to normal ass America. 

Her jaw slackens when she gets a view of the room, and the six of them shuffle in towards a wall of monitors. They’re all displaying camera views of a different island with another group of nine, a particularly ruggedly handsome group. 

“What the fuck.”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

“I’ll never forgive my parents for this.”

“It was an experiment,” Shelby informs, leaning against Toni who still is devouring Takis. “Some form of do-or-die therapy.”

“Unethical doesn’t even begin to describe the abuse,” Fatin mutters, skin crawling. She loves all of them and has never been this close to a group of people in her life, but what she went through on that island? 

What they all had to endure? 

Rachel lost a hand for fuck’s sake, and Shelby is still recovering from a head and knee injury. 

Martha and Nora became comatose. 

Toni almost died. 

Jeanette _died_.

Leah glances at her, biting her lip, and the pain that exudes from stormy eyes pierces right through her and constricts her throat. Fatin wants to reach out and comfort her, but instead, she nuzzles into Rachel and seeks safety from her.

They have little time to process the weight of the revelation before Leah is leading them to a set of double doors at the opposite end of this surveillance room. The sight that follows when Toni breaks the lock off the door is one Fatin will never forget.

* * *

Fatin hasn’t been home in a while. She spends most nights in someone else’s bed, falling back into old habits. 

The twins are in New York, on the other side of the country, reconnecting with their parents. Rachel is finally being seen by her family, being loved unconditionally, and Nora is awake and working on being more independent from her sister. 

Toni lives with Martha at the Blackburn’s house, allowing them to become her family after resisting it for so long. She didn’t want a new family, a part of her still wanted her mom to snap out of it and start loving her again, but with Martha’s family, she had guardians who cared for her despite all her aggressive flaws. Martha in turn was able to work through her past trauma and denial.

Dot is preparing to fly over to Cali, still all for living in Los Angeles with Fatin. She’ll be here in about another month or so, and until then, she’s accompanying Shelby who left her family. She lives in a tiny apartment somewhere in Dallas, barely scraping by as she finishes high school. UC Irvine offered her a scholarship, so Fatin knows she’ll see her soon, too. 

Her father threatened to ship her off to conversion therapy, and her mother was a silent accomplice; so she moved. 

Fatin would sock the man in the face if she ever got the chance. 

And Leah is… well, Fatin doesn’t know. 

She’s been giving her some space. More like ignoring her, so she doesn’t have to deal with Leah’s regret of their affairs on the island. She knows Leah was lonely and only sought comfort from her, but Fatin felt more than that.

But she also doesn’t do relationships.

Fatin refuses to be like her father, refuses to allow herself to love someone only to hurt them later. 

She’s strewn across someone else’s bed, buried under stained sheets when her phone rings from somewhere on the floor. The warm body asleep next to her doesn’t stir, still knocked out from earlier endeavors. Without properly looking at the contact name, she answers the phone while throwing on a shirt that’s two sizes too big. 

When she’s outside the room, in a hallway decorated with family portraits, she sighs, “Midnight booty call? Real classy.”

“It’s uh, Leah,” Leah’s voice cracks in the familiar high pitch it reaches after she’s cried her soul out. “Sorry if this is a bad time… I just-”

Leah whimpers, pausing to receive some sort of response, but Fatin never interrupts, quiet as she stands in a stranger’s house half-naked. 

“The others aren’t answering,” she continues, almost whining. “Time zones are the most inconvenient concept in all of existence.”

A pang of sorrow settles heavily in her chest. Fatin wasn’t Leah’s first choice, only a last resort to turn to in a time of desperation. She’s pushed her away to protect herself, but that doesn’t mean Fatin stopped caring.

“Why are you calling Leah?” Fatin blurts out, not bothering to beat around the bush. 

“My skull feels like it’s splitting in two,” she admits, breathing raggedly. “I have this sinking feeling like it’s not over, like one day, I’m going to wake up and be back on that stupid fucking island.”

Talking to Leah in the middle of the night is resurfacing memories Fatin’s been trying to ignore. 

“It wasn’t all bad,” Fatin murmurs, pinching the bridge of her nose because God, what is she saying? “Remember when we were all high lounging around on the shore before we played in the water for _hours_.”

Leah laughs in a short, sad kind of way. “I think it was the one time I wasn’t picking a fight.”

“We were starving half of the time, and everyday something brought us closer to the brink of death,” she replies softly and leans against a wall, listening to Leah’s breathing which is slowly calming down. “It fucked with our heads.”

“My head was already fucked to begin with,” Leah answers, and Fatin doesn’t slip out a sex joke, even though she really wants to. 

“We were all damaged,” Fatin divulges, swallowing thickly. “But we’re finally home, back to our realities.” 

Leah is quiet, like she’s processing her words. When she finally answers, she sounds exhausted; it feels as if she’s giving up on something.

What she’s giving up on, Fatin isn’t quite sure. 

“It doesn’t feel like home. It hasn’t felt like home in a long while.”

Fatin inhales sharply, chest tightening because she understands. God, does she fucking understand. It’s why she doesn’t go home—why she refuses to talk to her parents. They don’t value her unless she’s bowing a cello for horrendous amounts of time, blowing out her back and developing tendonitis. 

Her only regret is that ghosting her house also means ghosting her brothers. They call her often, always asking when she’ll be home and if she’ll take them to the movies. After months of being gone, they have missed her dearly, despite not caring much for her existence prior to an experimental hell. 

“What even makes a home anyway?” Fatin massages her temples, staring at the white blankness of the ceiling above. “Everyone wants one, but it’s a shitty social construct.”

Leah snorts, mumbling, “They’re a necessity. Something about protecting us from the weather and wild animals.” She hesitates to continue, allowing silence to swallow them whole before she manages to question faintly, “Do you feel as stuck as I do?”

Fatin contemplates the questions. Lets it roll around her thoughts and settle on a conclusion. “I do,” she responds quietly. “It feels like I’m waiting for some life-changing event again.”

With the stillness that ensues, she thinks Leah might’ve fallen asleep, emotionally drained from whatever spiral she was going through before Fatin answered the phone. But Leah’s next words suck the air from her lungs, and a dull ache burrows into her ribcage. 

“I miss you.” 

Fatin sinks to the floor, curling in on herself. Her lips fall open, attempting to muster up a simple response. But her throat constricts, and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to breathe. 

With burning eyes and the smallest whimper, she pulls the phone from her ear, gleaming screen blinding her in the darkness that surrounds her. Red button glaring at her, she ends the call.

* * *

With a school as small as hers in the Bay Area, it is incredibly difficult to dodge Leah. She steers clear of where the stormy eyed girl hangs out and ensures she’s always the first to leave in the one class she shares with her. Leah never enters the cafeteria or music room, but they often cross paths in passing periods where Fatin raises her phone in front of her and purposely records Instagram stories. 

Her thousands of followers scarf down her posts like she’s some goddess, and Fatin entertains them if only to pass the time. Leah never approaches, observing her from afar beside an ignorant Ian. He’s noticed that his best friend has been off ever since returning from her all girl’s retreat, but every time he brings it up, he’s shot down immediately. 

Leah keeps her secrets.

And Fatin keeps her space. 

At least, she tries her best to. 

Because, eventually, Leah decides that she needs to confront her. She chases her down after classes and waits for her after band practices. Fatin doesn’t actually play the cello anymore, quitting after working herself to the bone, but she finds comfort in hanging out with the school band, surrendering herself to their symphonies. 

She brushes off Leah’s attempts to talk to her, pretending that she doesn’t care. The pained expression that splits through Leah’s features physically makes Fatin nauseous, but her facade is indestructible as she walks away. 

A few days of this pass before Leah gives up, but the rug is ripped out from under her when someone else approaches her. 

“Fatin, we need to talk,” someone calls out, synching with her strides as she walks through the halls to the music room. 

Fatin slows, sliding her sunglasses a centimeter down to peek above the frame. “Do I even know you?” 

“Yes, I mean—no, but you should. We’re in like three classes together,” he stumbles over his words, a little nervous but insistent nonetheless. “I’m Ian; Leah’s best friend. You know her, right? Something happened between you two at the retreat thing, I know it.”

“Look, Liam-” 

“It’s actually Ian,” he corrects.

Fatin raises an unimpressed brow, effectively shutting him up. “If Leah isn’t talking, what makes you think I’ll tell you anything? A little intrusive on your part, don’t you think?”

“What? No, that’s not-” Fatin levels him with a brutal gaze, and he fumbles for words. “I’m concerned for her. After her impromptu vacation, she hasn’t been the same. You were there with her. What happened in Hawai’i?”

Fatin mentally scoffs at the idea of it being a vacation. It was hell manifested in the form of an island. Not all of it was torture, but she never wants to suffer through an affliction of that degree ever again. 

She diverts the conversation, still standing tall with an impeccable guise. “Is she still pining after perverted John Green?” 

Confidence infuses itself into Ian’s posture, and the smallest of smirks creases his lips. “An answer for an answer,” he proposes, and Fatin feels like she’s being cornered into a trap. 

Fighting the sinking feeling in her gut, she mutters, “I don’t have time for this. I can’t give you the answers you so desperately want.” 

Strutting away like the world is her runway, Fatin leaves him as she heads to a band practice she won’t even participate in. 

“You don’t deserve Leah!” he shouts from the opposite end of the hall, and a splintering pain shatters through her sternum as if someone broke into her chest and crushed her vital organ. “The cold shoulder you’re giving her? It’s fucked. You owe her at least a conversation.” 

The scowl that sews itself into wrinkles scrunches her face as she whips around. “The knight in shining armor role that you’re clinging to is pathetic,” she spews. Fatin’s jaw ticks and her eyes darken. “She doesn’t need to be saved or protected.” 

She needs support, needs comfort. She deserves to be cherished and celebrated.

It becomes apparent to Fatin then that Leah needs an anchor, so she doesn’t slip into the eternal abyss of obsessive darkness. Whether that anchor is a person or an idea, she’s yet to figure out. 

“And your blatant avoidance is deplorable,” he challenges, reflecting Fatin’s glare. “Let’s see, why would someone purposely ignore someone they worry about?” 

“Whoever said I care about her?” 

“It bothers you that she still thinks about Jeffrey,” Ian pins her earlier question against her, smothering her with the painful truth. “That she still wishes he would love her back.” 

Fatin scoffs instantly. “You’re just upset she wouldn’t fuck you even if the two of you were the last people on this miserable excuse of a planet.” 

Her entire body is sweltering with this immense heat, strangling her with deep-seated fury. Who is Ian to point accusatory fingers when he knows jack shit? She’s consumed by this fire, needing to scorch everything around her. 

Fatin storms away, forcing herself to forget about everything and anything. 

Ian doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. 

God, how does Leah even hang around him?

* * *

Steam thickens the air in the small bathroom, and feeling confined, Fatin waltzes into the connecting bedroom, only wrapped in a white towel. Daryl—she thinks his name is—is spread out across his mattress, snoring into a pillow. 

She sighs at the sight, collecting her stranded garments and slipping them back on. It’s midnight when she does the walk of shame to her car, collapsing into the driver’s seat and groaning. 

Her phone is ringing in her back pocket, and she’s mumbling a handful of profanities because who the hell is calling. But when she finds a picture of Dot lighting up her screen, she frowns slightly. 

“Dot? Isn’t it like two in the morning over there?” Fatin asks, reclining her chair. 

“You need to get your shit together,” is the first sentence Fatin hears from Dot after a week of only texting her. “I can’t stay up until the ass crack of dawn anymore.”

“Dude… what?” Fatin’s nose crinkles. “Why are you staying up?” 

“Because of you, Dude!”

“I don’t follow.”

“Leah,” Dot states like it’s the only answer Fatin will ever need. “You’ve been ignoring her, and she’s been calling me in the middle of the night to stress about the tiniest little things she could’ve done wrong. So what gives?”

Her mouth dries as her fingers dig into the skin of her thighs. 

Fatin knows the words caught in her throat will come out eventually. They’ll carry through the air and find solace in someone’s ears, and she’ll be judged for what she says.

But Dot is the least judgemental person she knows.

And honestly, she’s terrible with secrets.

“There was this night on the island,” she begins. Nails scraping further into her flesh. “Everyone was passed out, and I was on fire duty. Leah woke up in the middle of the night, gasping for air… She just needed comfort, and I was there and willing. It was the first time we really talked, and I saw her for more than this girl attached to some coming of age novel who was losing it. For a few nights, it turned into a habit. We’d talk the night away about all our grievances, and then it became more. I don’t remember the exact night that it happened, but we kissed, which wasn’t the worst thing to happen. Leah would need reassurance, and I’d hold her until she felt better. But…”

Crescent moons tear into her skin, leaking the tiniest hint of blood. She barely even feels the sting. 

“In the day, we’d bitch and ignore each other like the nights didn’t exist,” Fatin confesses, and fuck, this is why she doesn’t hang around girls often. “It felt like whiplash. But I was beginning to think I needed the nights just as much as she did.”

Pausing, she swallows thickly. “I guess, it felt good to be needed.”

Her nails stop clawing into her when she releases a heavy sigh. It’s the first time she spoke about that to anyone, and it feels a little liberating to admit those words aloud. 

Stacking her walls high, Fatin has convinced herself that she doesn’t need attachments. While her independence is essential, it can be really fucking lonely to push everyone away. 

Dot whistles. “Well shit. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You can say that again,” Fatin chuckles, shaking her head. “It’s just- I think I want more, but God, Dot. She already has enough internal struggles to deal with. Bringing her into my shit would be a huge disservice.”

“Why not let her make that decision herself?” Dot asks, yawning into the phone. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’re assuming that she can’t handle your life, that you’re not worth the trouble,” Dot clarifies, clearing her throat. “I mean, she deserves to make the decision herself, right?”

Air is caught in her throat as she sits there, unable to muster a response. 

“Not unless you’re just trying to dodge the rejection if she’s given the option to choose.”

Holy shit, Dot. 

Something about her just being able to single out Fatin’s insecurities is a little unnerving. 

“Something like that,” she mutters because the last thing she wants to do is lie to Dot. 

“You’re hurting her by ignoring her,” Dot asserts, and it feels like a slap in the face, really. “She wants to talk about it, so let her.”

Fatin folds her knees into her chest, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t do relationships,” she says, shaking her head. 

She’s reminded of what she found on her dad’s tablet. How he did a skank tour of the entire east bay. It makes her stomach churn, and she refuses to be anything like him.

“You also don’t hurt people you love,” Dot rebuttals, snorting because Fatin is being a little overdramatic. 

She bites her lip, furrowing her brows. “Whoever said anything about love?”

Laughter rumbles past Dot’s lips, and she struggles to breathe. “Platonic love, dude. You care about all of the girls. That’s all I meant by that.”

“Oh,” Fatin whispers, scratching the side of her neck. Her skin heats up in embarrassment, and she’s scolding herself for jumping to conclusions. 

“Yeah, _oh_.” Dot’s amusement echoes through the call as she shamelessly cracks up. 

“Fuck you.” 

A wolf whistle rings out before she replies, “Save that energy for Leah.” 

“Okay, but actually fuck you.” 

Fatin doesn’t wait for Dot to laugh in her face again, so she hangs up, tossing her phone onto the dash. She cradles her head into the curves of her knees, and with a ridiculously large smile, she laughs. It bubbles out of her in waves, and she’s shaking her head at herself because God, what the hell is she doing. 

Having Dot in her corner is a relief she’ll never be more grateful for.

* * *

The wind slices through her sweater and whips across numb cheeks. She stares into the harsh hues of the fire, mind wandering to a time before they were stranded in the middle of the Pacific. A stick in hand, she prods the fire and is mesmerized by the embers that rise. 

Her stomach is hollow, begging her for food, but she remains seated on the shore, starving as she lets time pass by. Every once in a while, she’ll look over at the girls and watch for the tell-tale signs that they’re still breathing. 

The fogginess in her brain almost takes over, causing her eyes to flutter as she fails to keep them open. But next to her, Leah is rolling in her sleep, feet kicking out. She stops struggling after a few minutes, and Fatin assumes the restlessness stopped. But then Leah lurches forward, breathing erratically and frantically searching the area. 

She finds the stupid book and cradles it like a child. 

Fatin never bothered reading it. _The Nature of Her_. What type of cliche shit. She read plot summaries online and guessed on all of the multiple-choice questions on quizzes. But she never cared for the book.

Something about a cis white man writing about the experiences of a woman has always been off-putting for her.

Tossing the stick into the fire, Fatin crawls over and cups Leah’s face. Shushing her, she soothes, “You’re okay. You’re okay. It was just a nightmare.” 

“Fatin?” 

Leah’s eyes are dilated in the low lighting, almost wild as if she doesn’t trust the girl in front of her. Her gaze keeps on shifting, raking over Fatin as she tries to understand. 

“It wasn’t real,” Fatin placates, running her thumbs over sunburnt cheekbones. “You’re awake now.” 

“Except it was,” Leah chokes out.

“What?”

Leah leans away, feeling smothered by the other girl. Fatin understands and sits back, keeping her hands to herself as she lets Leah collect her thoughts. She’s fully awake now, compared to the state of barely aware consciousness she was drifting through earlier.

“Jeffrey,” she mutters, breathing heavily. “It- It was real, but I-” 

She shakes her head, unable to properly sort through her words. Leah rocks herself back and forth, curled into herself. She loses herself into the brilliance of the flames as she continues to mumble. 

“I just, everything I felt for him was real—is real?” She lets out a frustrated sigh, lightly hitting her forehead against her knees. “It’s difficult to sort through the memories. I thought I loved him; I feel like I _do_ love him, but… Your words keep on cycling through my head, and what if his love for me was only a byproduct of my age?”

Fatin stiffens, uncomfortable about this conversation, but knowing Leah needs to talk about it. 

“I can’t speak for his motives,” Fatin begins, looking anywhere but her. She crosses her ankles, leaning back on her hands. “But I do think he isn’t worth the trouble. I’m sure you can find some other prolific writer in college and fall in love with them. You plan on majoring in English Literature, yeah?” 

Leah plucks at her eyebrow, completely ignoring the question. “But being with him, it’s like, like I’m free falling. All the air is sucked out of my lungs. My body feels light. Adrenaline is coursing through my entire being. It’s such a powerful rush of emotion.”

“Is that what love feels like to you?” Fatin asks, chancing a look at the stormy eyed girl. She’s still gazing into the fire, likely wishing she was back in the comfort of her own home. “Like you’re seconds away from dying?”

Leah glances up, finding soft brown eyes already watching her. She does a double-take as if Fatin misunderstood her simile. 

“It doesn’t feel like I’m dying.” Her brows pull together, frowning the slightest. Fatin wonders if she somehow offended her. “It feels like I’m finally _alive_.”

“You’re alive now, aren’t you?”

“Everyone here is half dead. What does love feel like to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t do love.”

Leah freezes like it somehow never occurred to her that someone wouldn’t want to fall in love. It’s not like she’s asexual or aromantic—although anybody who is is completely valid. She just doesn’t allow herself to love; it’s to protect herself. 

“Isn’t that lonely?”

“I have other people in my life who love me.”

Leah snorts, doubting her words. “Like who?”

Fatin scoffs. Of course, they can’t have one decent conversation. “You’re unbelievable.”

She gets up, prepared to stalk off into the dark, but Leah latches onto her wrist, dropping her precious book in the process. “Wait, Fatin. I didn’t mean-”

Marty and Toni stir beside them. They’re clinging to each other in their sleep, blocking out the cold. 

Leah lowers her voice, noticing them. “You’ve talked about how rough it is with your parents, and you hang around the popular kids. But it’s only to keep up appearances, right? I just assumed...” 

Fatin swallows down the lump in her throat, and an almost imperceptible pout settles on Leah’s face. Soft, penitent eyes plead with her. 

Fatin didn’t know that she even cared. 

What Leah whispers next causes Fatin’s heart to throb. 

“Please stay.” 

Fatin allows Leah to pull her down next to her as she grumbles, “You’re lucky my ass is freezing off right now.” 

Leah cracks a faint smile, leaning her head on Fatin’s shoulder. And she lets her.

**Author's Note:**

> This'll be a relatively short fic, and I'll post another chapter when my brain decides to go on think mode again.


End file.
